Colors
by A-J-aria
Summary: Josephine would kill them for this later, and Sera would surely be upset for missing out on all of the fun. Right now though? They were having a bit too much fun to care.


**Thought I'd start posting my fics on here! I hope you all enjoy! Solas fluff is pretty hard to write as he's all about brood and angst, so I apologize for any OOC-ness that may occur. If you want to read more fics by me feel free to follow me on tumblr a-j-aria. **

**DISCLAIMER: ALL CHARACTERS BELONG TO BIOWARE. I DO NOT OWN. **

She was on the platform above him painting. Of what he knew not and he was content to just let her be. More and more these days, she would come into his study whenever she could manage a small break in her day, to paint or to listen to his many tales of the Fade or simply to seek some solace from her everyday duties (and the irony of that last statement was not lost on him).

They were quiet as they both worked, Taryn on the fresco painting and Solas on his studies, but the quiet was not to last for he knew how much she so hated lapses of silence about as much as Solas took comfort in them. Her presence in his office made it hard to focus on the tome before him, the words going in through one ear and out through the other. He found himself distracted by the loud and plucky elf that was Taryn Lavellan. After all, the woman was always making noise – tapping her feet, shuffling about, humming a tune. Even her mere presence was loud, encompassing the entire room, moving about and fiddling her hands. He wondered how one whose specialty was stealth could manage to be so _loud._

"Come paint with me," she declared as she hooked her bare feet onto the wooden beams of the platform and swung to hang upside down over the table where he read. She looked every bit like a cave spider with the way she dangled before him.

"I'm afraid not, ma vhenan." His eyes never left the tome in his hands.

She pursed her lips and frowned. "Pleasantries will not get you out of painting with me, Solas." And Solas nudged her forehead out of the way in response hard enough to cause her to swing from her perch once more with a "Hey!" in rebuttal.

"Another time, yes?" He spoke, before turning his attention back to the pages before him.

"You are no fun," she groaned as she swung herself back onto the platform.

"What was that, emma lath?"

"Ooh nothing," she sing-songed before seemingly getting engrossed in the fresco once more and letting silence fall between them. And Solas thought that was that. However, not even a few minutes had passed before Taryn was unable to stand the silence once more. She began to fidget in her place and eventually set her brush down before speaking. "Solas?" Her voice drifted down to where he was sitting and the elf tried hard to keep the exasperated tone from his voice.

"Yes?"

"I need your opinion. You see, I want to add a light source coming in from the top left," she commented, reaching up on her toes to show off the area of which she spoke. Her hand moved diagonally across the walls to the wolves that Solas himself had painted about a week or so prior whilst the Inquisitor was away from Skyhold. "That way the light will rake across the fresco and beam down onto the wolves here," she gestured. "But I can't decide on what color to use for the light."

Solas blinked. He was surprised at the unusual seriousness of her question which contradicted her typical playful attitude and he set down the tome in his hands and moved to stand by the platform where the rogue stood.

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he considered her idea. "Wolves are often depicted in the dark of night, are they not? They are nocturnal so it would make sense to leave the fresco as is." And the elf was not saying that simply because he had painted the wolves himself. He was most certainly not.

"Oh come _on_," she protested. "We see more wolves in the Hinterlands when the sun is highest in the sky than we do when we set up camp for the night."

"Yet it is more typical to see them depicted under the shroud of darkness than in the light of day."

"That is true, but only by the Dalish."

"Would you not want to stick with traditional art of the your people?" He challenged.

"Of course not," Taryn said flippantly. "That whole wolves and darkness and grrr - evil wolf stuff is a load of shite and 'Fear the Dread Wolf' propaganda." The Inquisitor hauled up the basins of paint she had mixed in her hands and jumped down from the platform, landing swiftly and gracefully on her feet.

Solas was tempted to scold her on being reckless at jumping down from such a high perch with her hands piled up with paint that could spill everywhere. Although he knew his worries were unfounded for the Inquisitor has successfully jumped down from much higher perches than the platform just a few feet above.

"Then do you not believe in their Fen'Harel 'propaganda' as you like to call it?" Solas challenged and tried in vain to squash the small surge of joy that he felt at the idea that she believed that the stories the Dalish told of him were a 'load of shite'. Leave it to Taryn Lavellan to ignore the way the picture was already painted and paint her own version instead. It was what made her so endearing. So _her_. He was baiting her, he knew, with this talk of Fen'Harel. And she knew it too. He could see the frustration forming in the crease of her brow and he _wanted_ her to get frustrated with him, to argue. He wanted her to put some distance between them since he was too weak a man to do it himself. And for a moment, he thought he was successful. However, Taryn always managed to find new ways with which to prove him wrong.

"It's not that – just..." Taryn paused and took a deep breath. "Look," she said sternly, reaching down and pulling out brushes from the two buckets of mixed paint she had set on the ground earlier. "All I'm asking is if I should go with the orange," she brandished the brush in her left hand with a flick, a smattering of paint getting on his tome over on the desk causing him to flinch. "Or the yellow – " Her hand moved swiftly upwards causing the paint to splatter off in an arc directly towards Solas. He was not nearly as swift as Taryn so the elf could only watch helplessly as the paint hit him square in the face.

Taryn's face quickly went from irritated to "Oh shit" to "This is the best the best thing to ever happen in the history of forever" in about the two seconds that this all occurred. A tense silence fell between them, so still that one could quite possibly hear a pin drop.

"I – um.." Taryn was the first to speak. "Shite, that was an accident, Solas. I'm sorry." Although the grin threatening to upturn her lips said otherwise.

"Was it now?" He challenged, wiping off the paint on his forehead, although sadly only managing to smear it even more. He kept his tone even, revealing nothing and Taryn was unsure whether he was about to laugh it off or call upon the Fade spirits to murder her and make a slave out of her corpse.

"It was!" She insisted vehemently, waving her hands around and Solas was half-tempted to duck away at her frantic movements. He managed to stay firm though and sent her a disbelieving look. At the pointed gaze, she dropped her head back and groaned. "Urgh!" The Inquisitor grunted and shoved the brushes back into their respective cans. From her squat on the ground, she looked up at Solas. "That really _was_ an accident," she repeated, gazing up at him with earnest eyes. And Solas felt his resolve crumble at that look and uncrossed his arms from in front of him and stepped forward as she stood up to face him about to assure her that he did not blame her one bit. "But _this_," she spoke, mouth slowly forming into a sly grin, "this was on purpose."

Within the next moment the Inquisitor disappeared in a cloud of smoke, and Solas whipped his head around. "Tar – " But before he could even get the name out, Taryn appeared behind him like the trained assassin she was and smattered a large brush of red paint on the back of his head.

Solas swiftly spun around on his heels. "Did you just –!"

She grinned, a far too innocent grin considering what she had just done. "Sorry, I just can't resist a blank canvas, y'see." She rocked back and forth on the balls of her toes, the weapon of choice dangling from her fingers. "It was too tempting."

"Is that a jab at my choice of hairstyle, Lavellan?"

She smiled a cheeky smile. "Or lack thereof." And _shit_ he looked pissed. Lavellan was beginning to think that she had taken it a step too far. After all, one does not make fun of a bald man's bare head. .. Or paint on it. Especially is said head belonged to someone as serious and broody as Solas could be. Solas looked all too menacing with his arms folded behind his back, even with the paint smearing his face and head. Although the paint did help to take some of the edge off as Taryn observed that the red and yellow paints met where Solas' hairline would have been if he had hair to make an orange color that Lavellan was actually quite fond of.

Slowly, the elf advanced on her. Although he was not much taller than she, it felt as if he loomed over her. He leaned in close and Taryn didn't know what she was expecting him to do, but it certainly wasn't leaning down to kiss her as he did. As he initiated the contact, she sprung up onto her toes and cupped his face to lean in closer. She knew she would probably get yellow paint on her cheeks and along the lines of the vallaslin but could hardly find it in her to care at the moment.

All too soon, Solas was pulling back and Taryn leaned forward to chase his lips for a moment before she too pulled away.

"Jest all you like," Solas spoke, chest heaving as he caught his breath, just inches away from her lips. "But at least my head will be much easier to clean later than your own."

"What's wrong with my – " But before she could even finish, there were drops of red paint dripping down from her bangs and onto her lashes. "Son of a bitch, Solas," she swore, although she was giggling far too much to put any real venom into her voice.

Solas let out a laugh, a rare sound, but one that Taryn reveled in the sound of. "After your little stunt, did you think I would not retaliate?"

"Oh come_ on_," Lavellan groaned as she circled around Solas. He turned as she moved, keeping his eyes on her like a predator on its prey. They circled around each other, as if in a dance. "It was a joke. Personally," she spoke with a false innocence as she leaned down to the bucket, "I think you need to learn to _lighten up_." She disregarded the brush entirely this time in favor of scooping up a handful of yellow paint that she splattered all along the elf's front. "Geddit?! Lighten up!" She laughed at her own joke and then at the sight of Solas' tunic which was now efficiently ruined and grasped at her stomach as her laugh echoed through the atrium.

"Hmm, yes," he hummed, as he too reached down into the paint with his brush to splatter some on the woman in front. "A _colorful_ choice of words indeed." He splashed blue paint onto her and found his own smile mirroring hers as she let out a small shriek and retaliated with a splash of green. He was quite proud that he only slightly cringed when more of said paint got onto the desk and tome he had been reading earlier. Luckily the book was closed so its pages would remain untouched, although its delicate leather cover would never recover from the carnage of this paint war. _Perhaps the elves of old would find it in themselves to forgive me for damaging an artifact. _He thought as he snuck a glance between Lavellan and the book.

"Hey, elf," she called out. "First rule of war, never take your eyes off of your opponent!" She took a running start and slapped her paint coated hands on either side of Solas' cheeks, leaving two distinct handprints on either side of his face.

He was not sure for how long this battle lasted, he had long last track of the time. He did know, however, that it was over all too soon with paint splattered on just about every surface save for the actual buckets they had originally mixed the paint in.

They both stood there breathlessly, clothes and faces completely covered in a full spectrum of colors and eyes locked – although Taryn's left eye was beginning to twitch slightly as some red paint dripped down her eyelid.

"Truce?" She asked, her voice a bit hoarse from all of the laughter from before.

"Truce," Solas amended with a slow nod. He stood up straight with his arms folded behind his back and despite the paint, he managed a facade of diplomacy although there was a small grin breaking upon his lips.

"Good," she sighed, and with a burst of energy, she swung up on the support beams of the raised platform. With one hand, she ripped off a piece of the white tarp from the surface of the platform and dropped to her feet once more. Solas let out a small chuckle at the handprints she left on the beams as she climbed up.

Taryn waved the white tarp as a makeshift flag of surrender before wiping her face on it and handing it off to Solas. "I, Inquisitor Lavellan, solemnly declare an end to this gruesome war."

"All hail the Herald of Andraste," Solas retorted sardonically which Taryn reciprocated with a light shove.

"Oh admit it, you had _fun_," she taunted. And he did. More than he had in what felt like centuries. When all of this was over – as it inevitably would be – and he was forced to awaken from this dream, he would look back at this as one of the brightest moments in his existence. Never once in his life would he believe he'd be as happy as he was in that moment. And for that, he was and forever would be eternally grateful towards the woman before him. She had given him something he thought himself to be unworthy of, and she gave it wholeheartedly and without regrets. He did not deserve it, but he would treasure every moment she was in his life.

Turning his gaze to the woman in question, he realized that she was no longer looking at him but at the mural from before. He approached her from behind and wrapped his arms around her middle, tugging her close and enjoying the proximity. He could feel her shoulders relax under him before she spoke.

"I think I'm going to go with orange for the light – a rustic orange to shine light on the wolves," she said decisively, her tone more sober than before. Most of the walls, luckily, were unharmed by their antics. Many areas had been covered up whilst repairs were done and other parts of the walls were painted on. The wolves, however, would need to be repainted. Solas found that he could care less.

"A fine choice, indeed," he agreed as he gazed at the mural. "It is not often that I see paintings of wolves depicted in the light of day."

Taryn turned her head slightly back to get a good look at Solas and fixed him with a smile. "Well they can't spend all of their time in the darkness, can they?"

He gazed down at the woman in his arms, unsure of what to do with the emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. "No, I suppose not."


End file.
